The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Oscars) selected UH Mānoa professor Marc Moody’s screenplay Land of Lincoln as a 2010 semifinalist for the Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.

The Nicholl Fellowship is widely considered in the film industry as the world’s most esteemed screenwriting competition. Members of the Academy selected Moody’s Land of Lincoln as one of the top 114 screenplays from 6,304 entries.

Past semifinalists include:

Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3)

Damon Lindelof (executive producer & writer for Lost)

Melissa Rosenberg (Twilight)

Moody, an associate professor and undergraduate chair of UH Mānoa's School of Communications, distributed his feature film Almost Normal via 7th Art Releasing Wolfe Releasing in 2005. Almost Normal won in the categories of Best GLBT Film and Best Ensemble Acting at the Breckenridge Fillm Festival in 2006. Since 2008, Almost Normal has been Internationally distributed in more than seven countries and airs on MTV's Logo channel.

Moody also was recognized with the Phred Love Best Filmmaker Award in 2005. He is presently in pre-production for his next feature film Almost Normal 2 with his business partner and producer Sharon Teo, associate professor at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln's Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, where she is the school's associate director.

UH Mānoa's School of Communications is the center for academic and professional scholarship linking East and West through the broad areas of communication and journalism. The mission of the school is to be the primary resource for the people of Hawaiʻi, through an integrated program of excellence in teaching, research and application, to meet the challenges and opportunities of communication and journalism in the emerging technological, multicultural, and international context of the twenty-first century.